Take that (not) Einstein!
A idiotic comments trying to argue that its different, dont understand that the AIM stays the same. And yes after each iteration you get closer with practice.
The execution might look a bit different but the aim is still at the exact same after each iteration.
Thanks!
I’d argue it’s all but impossible to do the exact same execution every single time, even if you aren’t practising.
I feel like some people (and on the internet maybe even most people) need to disagree to everything that is said. I had that so often that I agree with someone, and offer another point arguing in the same direction, only for the other person to misunderstand my support of their point as an attack and starting to argue against my supporting point.
I hate contrarians.
If you’re practicing the exact same way over and over you’re doing something wrong.
You must not be a bowler.
That’s not always true. Finding the optimal way to do something is only one potential aspect of practice. Another is getting to a level where you can do it consistently and on demand, over and over and over, without missing a beat.
And even once you’ve reached that level, that skill can be lost or degrade over time if you dont keep at it, so repeatedly performing the same motions in the exact same way becomes pretty much necessary in order to maintain your skill level.
If you were looking for consistency, that is by definition you looking for the same result, which is not covered in the definition of insanity.
Oops. I appreciate you clearing up the confusion. You ever just feel like a big dumb idiot sometimes? Cause I sure do.
Finding? How are you going to find it? Since you’re arguing to never change what you’re doing in practice the very first attempt at practice must be the thing you always repeat right?
Why are you pretending I said things I didn’t say? Finding the optimal way of doing something involves getting it wrong before you get it right. We all know this. What I was talking about was not greenhorn entry-level practice, but the practice of an expert who has already figured that much out. Obviously, you have to learn the right way to do something before you can do it the right way.
Ask literally any half-decent guitarist if trying to do the same exact thing in the same exact way helps or hurts their skill. Now ask a martial artist. A dancer. A singer. A painter. An engineer. A carpenter. Even a bowler, as someone else already mentioned. These are all skills that are honed through repitition.
In the spirit of the dialogue, I am going to repeat myself because it seems like I might need to; none of them got it right the first time. But after they did get it right, I guarantee you, their practice became about doing it again in exactly the same way. And then, once they were happy with their newly refinded skill, they learn something else and start that cycle again.
What’s that Bruce Lee quote? “I do not fear the man that has practiced a thousand moves once. I fear the man that has practiced one move a thousand times”. Skill comes with understanding and understanding comes with focus. At first, you focus on placing your fingers on exactly the right frets at exactly the right time, and then, after you’ve figure that out and can do it correctly, you focus on doing it over and over again until you’re sure that can always do it exactly the way you want to, whenever you want it done. This isn’t esoteric lore. It’s common sense.
Finding the optimal way of doing something involves getting it wrong before you get it right. We all know this. What I was talking about was not greenhorn entry-level practice, but the practice of an expert who has already figured that much out. Obviously, you have to learn the right way to do something before you can do it the right way.
Congratulations that was the point.
If that’s the point, then I had it right the first time, and only seemed to lose you when I followed the idea to its obvious next leg. After you figure out how to do it right, then the rest of that initial comment comes into play.
You not following along well enough until it’s been reiterated and fed to you as directly and simply as possible is not the dunk you seem to think it is.
Oh look you lost the point again.
Yeah, no. You should be adjusting each cycle when you practice, until you start getting the desired results.
No matter whether you are awful or great, if you are practising skateboard tricks it’s called “practising skateboard tricks”. Because you are doing the same thing. You aren’t doing identical actions while practising skateboard tricks, but you are doing the same overall task.
No.
You’re either doing the thing right, and expecting the same result, or you’re doing it wrong and then adjusting. Either way, you’re not doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
You are doing the same thing (e.g. practising a specific piece of music on a specific instrument). If you are doing it poorly or on world-class level, it is still the same thing. It’s not identical actions within the task of practising that song, but no matter how good you are, it would be still called the same thing (“practising to play song X on instrument Y”).
You reworded my comment.
edit. You’ve lost your keys. You look in your pants pocket 500 times. Insanity, because you’re doing the same thing and expecting that this time the keys will show up, even though they weren’t there the first 499 times.
You play “O, Canada” on the steel drums 500 times. Sometimes you play it through perfectly and occasionally you make a mistake. You note the mistakes. When you play it right you’re getting the result you expect, and if you make a mistake, you adjust.
You claimed the opposite.
- My original post was: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
- You said “No, you are not doing the same thing and expecting different results”
- I said “You are doing the same thing when practising”
- You said “You reworded my comment”
If you mean “saying the opposite” by “rewording the comment” then you are right. But to me, saying the opposite is not rewording.
I’ll let whoever reads this decide.
You’re correct, OP is wrong
Thank you
At least you got the fisting enthusiast on your side.
Idk about that…
When you practice something, you’re actively changing your technique to elicit better results. You’re not making huge changes, but rather a series of miniscule ones that add up.
For instance, I could sit down with a flute and a piece of music, and play it decently. It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be terrible. If I play it the same way every time, it’s always going to sound decent - but it’s always going to have the same wrong notes, the same rushed passages, the same intonation issues… If I practice it, I can make changes over time that fix those things. I can fix my fingerings, even out the rushed bits, adjust my intonation… But then I wouldn’t be doing the same thing anymore, I’d be doing something slightly different.
You are doing the same thing (playing the same piece of music on the same flute). You aren’t doing an identical thing.
You don’t think the context of the quote is implying doing the same exact thing repeatedly?
No, it says “the same thing”, not “the identical action” or even “the same thing exactly the same way”.
If you are practising something, are you not doing the same thing (“practising X”) no matter whether you are good or bad at it?
Do you call it differently, depending on your skill level?
“practicing” is spelled with a ‘c’
Oh, another American who hasn’t heard of British English!
I feel like you’re purposefully arguing in bad faith. Are you legitimately trying to convince me that “the same thing” means “not really the same thing”? Regardless of how you meant to ask the question I believe most people, in this thread at least, have a very different sense of what the original quote meant. Your responses throughout the thread feels like trolling.
It’s impossible to do the identical thing twice. Try it. Try to throw a ball absolutely identically twice. That’s not possible. Each time the ball will end up flying slightly different. So obviously “doing the same thing over and over again” cannot mean “doing an identical action over and over again”.
Because that would be equivalent to “the definition of insanity is performing an impossible action”. That’s nonsensical.
Thus “the same thing” must refer to that the overarching action is the same, not that every detail is identical. And that’s what you do when you practice: You e.g. play the same song on the same instrument over and over again. Crappy at first, proficient in the end.
Did Einstein actually say that? Even if he did, he wasn’t a psychologist. Plus, scientists recreate experiments all the time, literally doing as close to the same thing as possible and often getting different results.
So No. I also was always very irritated by this quote, because from a scientific point of view this is rather incorrect, as (like you said) experiments need to be repeated, to verify the results.
No, Einstein did not say that. But it’s often misattributed to him, that’s why I put it as “(not) Einstein”.
Gotcha, thanks!
The difference is that when one is practicing something one knows that “the result” can be achieved or improved.
We have (at least) two fundamentally different types of knowledge—there’s our intuitive world model that does improve with repetition learning (much like a neural network) and does change with practice; and there’s rule-based knowledge that improves by eliminating possible rules/theories via observation.
My interpretation of Einstein’s quip is that insanity consists in confusing the two—thinking that rule-based knowledge can improve by performing the same tests over and over until the results match our theories, instead of modifying our theories to reflect the results.
It’s not an Einstein quote. It’s a common misattribution to make a stupid quote sound smart.
This was one guys opinion and everyone took it to heart. For example, If we listened to and did everything Neil degrass Tyson said then we’d all be closed minded condescending assholes
And we don’t even know who that one guy was apart from that it wasn’t Einstein.
